27/2/1919 Zionist plans for Palestine

Britain has already declared its support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Now leading Zionists address the Paris Conference in support of their plans, including the well-connected Chaim Weizmann and others from Eastern Europe, who remind delegates of the horrors being experienced by their fellow Jews there (where the massacres at Lemberg and more recently Proskurov have already shocked world opinion). In his presentation and his private discussions with world leaders, Weizmann is deliberately vague as to the political arrangements that will apply in this Jewish homeland; he is careful not to refer to a future Jewish state or even to the prospect of Jews becoming a majority in Palestine. American Zionists are more uncompromising in this regard, but their representatives have not arrived in Paris yet, so Weizmann’s more subtle approach carries the day.

Weizmann does not however have things completely his way. French Zionist André…